U.N. Ambassador, in Central Africa, Vows Aid and Hears of a Unity Shattered

Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, center left, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an assistant secretary of state, center right, with Christian and Muslim leaders during a one-day visit to Bangui, Central African Republic, on Thursday.Credit
Jerome Delay/Associated Press

BANGUI, Central African Republic — Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, came to this tinderbox of a city on Thursday to pledge American support to end the sectarian strife that has engulfed the country, saying that the international efforts to stem the violence have been essential but not sufficient to restore calm.

The depth of distress here was plain. So, too, was the depth of the distrust sown almost overnight in a society where Muslims and Christians had lived with each other for years.

Far less clear was whether the growing but still limited American role would help put an end to the crisis, or whether a full-fledged United Nations peacekeeping force would have to be deployed to quell a conflict that has gripped the nation for months.

France, the country’s former colonial ruler, has sent 1,600 soldiers to aid thousands of African Union-led forces. The United States has contributed $100 million to transport and equip the African units, but the Obama administration is not considering sending American soldiers, nor has it committed to supporting a large and expensive United Nations peacekeeping operation, as some have called for.

Ms. Power said that her visit demonstrated to her that more needed to be done. There have been improvements, she argued: With soldiers patrolling the streets, residents of the capital, Bangui, were buying rice and yams at the market, barbershops were open, and there were no corpses on the roads, as there had been just two weeks ago.

Even so, those who fled their homes — there are at least 600,000 of them across the country — told her that they were nowhere near ready to return. Gunfire broke out near the airport shortly after her departure on Thursday evening. And she heard stories of unspeakable brutality from priests, imams, widows and wounded civilians, even as they told her of their long tradition of religious harmony.

“I come away from our time in CAR very concerned about the extent of the polarization, the tautness of the society and the temptation that families and communities that have been victimized have to take justice into their own hands,” she said later in the evening, after she had left Bangui.

In the morning, a young man told her that with Muslim fighters killing so many friends and relatives of Christians, young people like him could well imagine joining a militia in revenge. Minutes later came four women, all Muslims, grieving, because a mob had killed their husbands.

She heard from Christian clerics about churches that had been looted. At a nearby mosque, a parishioner angrily complained that only Muslim forces were being disarmed by peacekeepers. A woman stood before her and described how her husband was murdered. He was hacked first with a machete, and then a mob poured gasoline on his corpse and watched it burn.

At a news conference at the end of her visit, she warned, “There is a tyranny of the mob that has taken hold here that is horrific in its own right, but also something that can be hard to stop once it’s been unleashed.”

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She said she hoped religious leaders would be able to tap into the country’s history of communal harmony and push for reconciliation. The United States, she announced, will contribute $7 million to the effort.

Her message for civilians was to “stand above” the temptation for revenge. Her message for the politicians she met, she said, was to remind them of their promise to give up power and hold elections by 2015. She called for human rights inquiries that would hold perpetrators of violence accountable. And she announced an additional $15 million for humanitarian relief.

Her prescriptions come with tough challenges. It is unclear whether the African troops, once they reach their planned strength of 6,000 soldiers, will be able to disarm the many loosely organized militias in a country so vast, and whether donor countries will contribute enough money to keep the African Union force going. Nor is it clear whether her calls for a national commission of inquiry to investigate rights abuses will be enough to temper an appetite for revenge.

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The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has recommended, among other things, deploying an official United Nations peacekeeping force of 6,000 to 9,000 troops. The Security Council has authorized him to start preparing for that option, which is far more expensive than the current arrangement. American officials have been noncommittal about that prospect, insisting that it is more efficient to equip and transport African forces quickly, aided by the deployment of French soldiers.

Ms. Power argues that it remains important to assist the Africans and make sure they get there quickly. The secretary general is expected to present his recommendations about a potential peacekeeping force early next year to the Security Council. Ms. Power will have to make a hard call then.

The visit on Thursday was Ms. Power’s first solo trip as the American ambassador to the United Nations; she took office in August. No American official of her rank has visited this country before, officials said, a sign of the limited American economic and strategic interests here. The United States Embassy has been closed intermittently over the last several years.

The Obama administration, though, does have an interest in averting genocide here, particularly Ms. Power, who has built a reputation pushing for global powers to prevent atrocities.

In a small room on Thursday, the young man who alluded to joining a militia told her that he had counted 22 corpses on a small stretch of road after the rebels who overthrew the government and seized power this year — a group known as Seleka that is mostly Muslim — went on a rampage. He said his cousins were among the dead in the countryside, adding that if nothing changed in the next couple of months, he could himself join the Christian militias that have sprung up in defense.

Ms. Power, who had been taking notes, looked up and asked: Does that mean killing people because they are Muslim?

Seleka’s rivals, the loosely organized, mostly Christian Balaka militias, have begun to wreak havoc — and Muslims complained to Ms. Power that they were not being disarmed. Muslims were not the only ones terrified about the Balaka. One Christian pastor, the Rev. Nicolas Guerekoyame-Gbangou, said the Balaka had recently abducted three Christian boys from Bangui; he was negotiating with militia leaders to secure their release.

Fear had cast such a pall over the city that next to the airport, an estimated 40,000 people had chosen to sleep outdoors, on nothing but plastic mats, just so they could be close to the French troops guarding the airport. There was not enough water there, no tarpaulin to protect against rain, and no more than a few trenches to serve as an open, communal toilet. People complained of hunger. Sufficient amounts of food aid had not come, even though the camp is perched on the edge of the heavily guarded airport.

Lindis Hurum, who heads a Doctors Without Borders clinic at the camp, said she was told that two babies, both under the age of 1, had died overnight. Doctors here said they had delivered an average of eight babies a day.

Correction: December 23, 2013

Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about a visit by Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, to the violence-torn Central African Republic misidentified the person who was told that two babies had died overnight in a camp next to the airport in Bangui, the capital. It was Lindis Hurum, who heads a Doctors Without Borders clinic at the camp, not Ms. Power.

Correction: December 31, 2013

An Associated Press picture caption on Dec. 20 with an article about a visit by Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, to the violence-torn Central African Republic omitted the identification for Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an assistant secretary of state, who was shown with Ms. Power. Ms. Thomas-Greenfield was not one of the “Christian and Muslim leaders” pictured with the ambassador.

A version of this article appears in print on December 20, 2013, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: U.N. Ambassador, in Central Africa, Vows Aid and Hears of a Unity Shattered. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe